It stood at least nine feet tall and was humanoid in appearance, with dark-blue skin, red eyes, and four outstretched arms. A dark aura covered it and cascaded over it like smoke to obscure the bottom half of its body. In silence, it looked around the room. Most of those gathered were shocked and a couple had needed time to readjust to the low light before they saw the monster before them. It seemed to smile or possibly display its fangs to the crowd of hunters, stretched one arm forward, and released a blanket of black smoke from its palm.
“We’ve been tricked!” someone cried and many of the group drew their arms or let their magic flare as the darkness covered the room.
Chapter Five
At least ten of the crowd prepared to lash out at the perceived threat. Rika stood firm, however, as did Chatan and Nemo. They simply observed the monster which wasn’t difficult, even when the dark cloud washed over them, since it did nothing.
It was merely an illusion.
Before any of the riled hunters could do anything, the operatives stepped forward and stopped in front of the crowd to prevent them from attacking. The smoke began to reverse and retreated into the monster’s palm. It lowered its hand and made a noise that sounded like a chuckle before it became a full-blown laugh. It wasn’t wicked or dangerous but almost childish. High-pitched and feminine, the creature shrank and lost two of its arms as the other two melted into its chest. The skin lost the blue hue, assumed the soft bronze of tanned flesh, and brunette hair grew from its head. A woman had taken the place of the creature and her laughter subsided as she returned to her true form.
“She’s rather skilled in illusion,” Chatan noted.
“Sorceress is my guess. A good one, too,” Nemo concurred. “Maintaining an illusion through teleportation ain’t easy.”
“She didn’t,” Rika stated. “She transformed as soon as she got here, using the flash of the entry as a quick curtain to take that shape.”
“Nice eyes,” Nemo complimented and stretched his arms out as he stepped to the side. “You might wanna clear the way. I think I’ve got an idea how this is going to end.”
The woman finally ceased her laughter. She wore a long white coat with a white mini-dress beneath and black leggings. Standing tall, she examined the room and held up five fingers on both hands. Small colored orbs protruded from her fingertips. When she pointed at various hunters on each side of the room, one of the colored orbs struck each one so fast they had no time to flinch before they were covered in a bright glow or neon colors.
“All right, you ten get out of here,” she announced to shocked gasps and angry cries from the chosen.
“What?” the berserker yelled. He was covered in a neon-green glow. “I’ve been here for three days! I passed your test. Why are you saying I am unworthy now?”
“You were going to attack me,” she stated, turned toward him, and placed her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “I can tell the difference between someone who was fooled and someone who was simply cautious. For this mission, we need brains as well as brawn. The first test was only to get the best we could. This one was to see if you were worth the time.”
“Bitch!” he roared and his eyes turned red as he rushed at her. She didn’t move, nor did the operatives. Instead, she simply smiled at the much larger man as he bore down on her and threw a punch directly into her face, which shattered.
The impact fragmented her body as well, but instead of blood or organs appearing, she took the appearance of glass and the shards erupted and spun lethally. The pieces cut into the berserker, who tried to shield his eyes. The glass on the floor formed into a mirror about as big as he was. The sorceress crawled out of one of the shards that had landed behind him, stood, and walked closer as he tried to yank the glass out of his skin.
She waved her hand and the green light that surrounded him became solid and bound his arms to his chest. The berserker struggled but she kicked one knee out from under him and he landed heavily. With little apparent effort, she shoved him forward with her foot and he scooted onto the mirror without resistance. In a moment, he sank into it and his prison shrank to the size of her palm once he had been swallowed.
Some of the hunters looked bewildered, including Rika, although Nemo stifled a laugh. The sorceress turned and presented the mirror to reveal the berserker inside, where he pounded futilely on the glass. The other dismissed hunters looked at one another in confusion and worry as she gave one of the operators the glass. He rushed away and ran past Rika toward the teleportation room.
“Does anyone else object?” she asked casually. Grumbles or angry silence were the only responses, but the others who had been chosen didn’t move toward her. One by one, they turned away and walked toward Rika and Chatan, who stepped aside. She looked up and encountered Nemo’s “told you so” look.
“The rest of you, come closer so we can see what we’re working with,” she ordered. Rika, Chatan, and Nemo walked to the center of the room and the other three did as well. The paladin-cleric she’d notice before was one, along with the older man in the long cloak. The last one was a man with a large tome who wore a gray button-down vest and black slacks, with a white shawl around his shoulders. There wasn’t much color in the wardrobe of this group, she noted, but considering they were all hunters and usually worked in the dark or got covered in blood, that was probably the norm.
“So only six left, huh?” the sorceress mused and folded her arms. “Well, I suppose we didn’t have much time to set this up, so it’s no surprise we only got a small group.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that plenty tonight,” Rika muttered and folded her arms as well. “So, is there another test or do we get to find out why we’re here now?”
A hand settled on her shoulder. “Straight to the point, I see,” the sorceress said from behind her. She did a double-take, and the woman smiled at her, somehow both in front and behind. “The only test left is one of conviction. We’ll see if you stay once you hear what we need.” The sorceress walked past her and the doppelganger in the front of the room vanished.
“You are making this sound rather dire, madame,” the older gentleman protested and twirled his cane. “I’m surprised that an official organization would reach out to lone hunters such as us.”
“Needs must when the devil drives.” She sighed. “We’ve run into a problem and although we were dispatched to handle it, there have been complications.”
“Of what kind?” the blonde woman asked.
“Pains in the ass, really,” she admitted and produced an image of a circle with complex runes etched around it. “All right, who knows what this is?”
“A summoning circle,” the man with the tome answered. “A rather complex one to summon something not of this plane.”
“Point to you.” She nodded and held her other hand up to display an image of a dark obelisk with more runes etched in red. “Wanna go for two?”
The man folded his arms and cocked his head. “I haven’t seen anything that specific but I would say it is an anchor of some kind, probably for binding.”
“That’s fairly close. Wanna take a closer look and give it another go?” she asked and enlarged the obelisk. The man stepped forward and studied the runes, and his eyebrows raised once he looked at those on the lower part of the anchor. “The etchings are imprecise. This wouldn’t bind anything powerful. If anything, this would feed the power of those who made the markings to the summoning circle and bring something much worse than intended.”
“Yep, and that is the problem.” The images disappeared as the woman shook her head and placed her hands in her pockets again. “All right, I’ll try to make this brief. I am one of the heads of the Twixt organization, and we came here because of the Deja cult.”
“Those asshats?” Nemo questioned. “They’re idiots and we’ve all probably gotten plenty of work because of their mishaps.”
The hunters mostly agreed. The Deja cult was wanted more for their mistakes than real crimes. Rika thought of at least ten gigs she had been given
because of their idiocy.
“Well, they got new management—or more precisely, they were infiltrated,” the sorceress explained. “A warlock has been able to take the cult and turn them into his thralls—at least the ones he didn’t use for…unpleasant things. You’ve probably noticed the dry spell around town?”
“Unfortunately. My bar tab has been getting bigger,” Nemo admitted.
“I’ve quite enjoyed it. It has meant more time for research and study for me,” the man with the tome stated cheerfully.
Nemo frowned. “Good, one of those,” he muttered with an eye-roll.
“As much as I enjoy the peace, I didn’t train to sit idle for days at a time,” the blonde woman said.
“Well, most of that is because this warlock has been eliminating the competition and capturing the monsters and specters you normally hunt to feed his little experiment,” the sorceress explained.
“Doing all that for no pay? That’s going to lower prices for us.” The older man chuckled.
“So, to condense this, he’s trying to summon a big scary monster to be his familiar. However, the spell he was using to control the Deja cult started to wear off and led to the problem our scholarly gentleman pointed out,” the woman stated and the image of the summoning circle appeared once again. “From what we can tell, the warlock has fled or is in hiding. Either the remaining cult members snapped out of it and escaped, or they were lost during the summoning.”
“Wait, this thing is already out there?” Rika asked.
“Not yet,” she said with a shake of her head. “It requires considerable power to bring this big guy over and the channel runs deep, so it’s taken a few days for it to get here. Which is where you all come in.” She extended a hand and smiled. “Wanna go a hunt a terror from the great beyond?”
Chapter Six
“Do you mind if I ask a question?” the man with the tome inquired.
The sorceress shrugged. “I figured there would be a few. What’s up?”
Before he could do so, Rika interrupted. “Why do you need us to do this? You seem powerful enough to take whatever this thing is on.”
The scholar’s question died in his throat, and he tapped his fingers on the binding of his book. “I was curious about that myself.”
“Believe it or not, I’m not well suited for combat against monsters, especially not at the level we’re expecting this one to be,” she admitted. “Big oafs like that berserker are no problem. I deal with other magic-wielders, but strong creatures can tear through most of my spells rather easily. I’m one of the heads of Twist for my strategy and knowledge, not combat.”
“What about all your flunkies?” Nemo questioned.
“Right, that.” She coughed into her hand and the image of the summoning circle vanished and was replaced by an image of a different rune. “You might have noticed that our operatives are…peculiar.”
“I simply thought it was the current fashion,” the older gentleman offered.
“It’s not, trust me,” Rika replied and earned a tip of the hat from him.
“They are golems, created by a small team in our organization. Twixt is quite small compared to most organizations.”
“So, you’re more like a club?” Nemo asked.
“We think of ourselves as specialists,” she returned smartly, although she looked away sheepishly as she scratched her cheek. “The golems do most of the fieldwork.”
“And that rune stops them somehow?” the scholar hypothesized.
“Yep, it shuts them down.” She sighed. “I tried to deactivate as many as I could, but they’re scattered all over the damn forest. We had to think of a new plan, and…well, you’re it.”
“You mention ‘levels’ when referring to this creature,” the older gentleman noted. “Do you care to explain?”
“It merely means the potential power this monster could have.” She pointed toward Rika. “You fought the dusk wraith, right? We usually mark those around a five.”
“And what is this considered?” the paladin asked.
“My best guess would be an eleven, maybe twelve,” she stated.
“On a scale of what?” Chatan asked.
“We use a scale of fifteen.”
So, more than double what they assumed a dusk wraith was but then again, power was relative. Rika didn’t see any strain of wraith as too big a problem anymore, so maybe this would be easier than she thought.
“If this monster is supposed to be so powerful, why chase away those other hunters?” the scholar asked. “Surely the more assistance on this mission, the better.”
“While we don’t know specifically what is being summoned, any creature of this level has certain abilities,” she explained. “One is being able to drain magical energy, particularly upon death. So if that berserker died in battle, this monster could take his power and add it to his. He would then have his own power and be able to level buildings with one punch as well. We had to be more discerning.”
“And the ability to see through your illusion?” Chatan asked. “How does that help?”
“Well, it shows you won’t panic, for one,” she stated. “But the forest also has defenses—more runes and totems set up by the cult. It will keep you trapped in there and send illusions to haunt you and distort your minds. Come to think of it, maybe the Deja cultists simply got lost after the summoning.”
“Is that it?” Nemo asked. “Only illusion magic?”
“Well, this is the Govan Forest,” she revealed. “So there are imp nests and probably fel hounds—those kinds of things. We haven’t ventured far enough in to know for sure what awaits you, but I’m sure it is well-guarded.”
“You haven’t been far enough in? Then how do you know about the circle?” the paladin questioned.
“Our seer was the one who discovered it—or saw it in a vision,” the sorceress stated. “By the time we got the go-ahead to come here, the defenses had been set up. No sentry could go deep enough, and without the aid of the golems, we didn’t have the manpower. Most of our other main operatives are on other missions.”
“I see,” the older gentleman murmured. He held his chin and looked at the ground in thought. “So the hope is we can stop the summoning from being completed.”
“‘Hope’ would be exactly right.” She nodded. “If not, then slay it.”
“And if we fail? Do you have a backup plan?” he inquired.
Her smile finally fell, and she looked at them with sudden seriousness. “We would probably have to nova the place.”
Rika startled. She had only seen the aftermath of novas in pictures and read about their effects. A nova was an explosion of disenchantment magic that utterly eradicated any magic in the location. It was quite unstable and could cover an area of at least a mile, but there had been the incident in Chernobyl that affected a hell of a lot more than that.
“You can guess that we’d rather not, but if you fail, we don’t have the time to gather another force to combat it and we cannot let it escape.”
“So, you already have one on hand?” the elder asked.
“We’re prepping it but would rather not use it,” the sorceress confirmed.
“It’s good to have that hanging over our heads,” Nemo grumbled. “Well, I already know what I’m getting paid, and I’m freshly stocked. I’m in.”
“Wonderful!” The woman’s smile returned. “Step forward and introduce yourself. Name and discipline, so everyone knows.”
“Right.” He walked forward and puffed his chest out. “Nemo Olzen, necromancer.”
Chatan stepped beside him. “Chatan Cavazos, shaman.”
The older man chuckled, spun his cane as he walked forward, and planted it in front of his feet. “Dimitri Greyman, shadowcrafter.”
The blonde was next and held her sword to her hip. “Kendra Solei, cleric.” Rika frowned because she would have bet money the woman was a paladin.
She took a moment to straighten her posture. Like hell she was going to be last,
but the scholar shuffled forward quickly. “Faro Newton, alchemist.”
Well, dammit! Rika put it out of her mind and stepped forward. “Rika Albright…” She looked at Chatan. “Cabalist.”
“So, everyone is in, then?” the sorceress asked and placed a hand on her chest. “Isadora Faye, but I don’t think we’ll see each other again. Well, maybe I’ll stop by to say congratulations at the end.” She produced a small velvet bag, opened it, and presented it to the group for each to reach in. They did so and Rika’s face fell when she stared at another small marble. More teleportation, oh joy.
“You still have Chatan’s meds, right?” Nemo asked and rolled his orb in his hands.
She nodded and tapped her jeans pocket. “I guess I’ll get to see how good it is.”
“I probably should have made more,” the shaman noted. She looked at the alchemist and the cleric, who both frowned at their orbs.
“So then, are all of you ready?” Isadora asked.
“I don’t believe we have much time to prepare, do we?” Dimitri retorted.
“Not at all!” She stepped back and snapped her fingers, and the orbs began to glow. “Have fun hunting the monster.”
Nemo laughed as the light from began to engulf them. “Of course! This is what we do!” he roared as the six of them disappeared from the room.
Chapter Seven
Rika once again saw the night sky when she opened her eyes. She also felt a similar nausea to that from her first jump and this time, it struck with a vengeance. Her expression set in a grimace, she retrieved the small bag Chatan had given her and opened it to peer at several small clear capsules filled with dark- and light-brown powder. She opened two and swallowed the powder, which tasted very much like the dirt it looked like. Immediately, she sputtered and coughed but a tap on her back distracted her. She looked at the shaman she had gotten the concoction from and he offered her a bottle of water, which she took eagerly and thankfully.
Magic Hunters: The Operatives Page 3
